November Back Bay Flounder And A Couple of 500+ Pound Swordfish
By Scott Lenox
Posted on November 12th, 2026
The weather is about to break real cool starting tomorrow as highs are only supposed to reach into the 40s in and around Ocean City. That made today’s weather even more sweet and it was awesome to get out. I had hit the Choptank River today with Captain Jeff Geary of Sick Day Sportfishing and we had an awesome time catching over 60 rockfish with Scott Patey for a new episode of Hooked on OC.
Captain Jason Mumford of Lucky Break Charters was out throwing lures looking for fall stripers or trout, but instead lucked into two flounder with one of them being a keeper. Nice seeing some flounder in the back bay in November.
Jake Kinzie, Joe Spade, Blaine Beyer and Captain Keith Jacobs bought some bait from Shannon at 353 Custom Tackle and used it to land this HUGE 558 pound swordfish on the private boat Way Out. The big sword took 3 hours to get to the boat with an electric reel.
John Walker of Laurel, DE was fishing with Bill Timme, Jimmy Michael, Chris Shields, Steve Joyce and John Morton when he landed this HUGE swordfish of 510 pounds aboard the private boat Chase Em.
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star saw some decent sea bass fishing in the “swelly” sea today
Sea Bass on a swell(y!) day – 11/12/26
Thought the weatherman had granted us a reprieve yesterday evening. Did ..but he took it back this morning. Though winds were fairly light, was a tad snotty in ESE swells up to 8 ft. Thankfully a bit of distance between troughs made it fishable. Wind came round after lunch and got plenty whitecappy..
Just missed a spectacular marine sunrise – am scheduling future fall trips a half hour earlier to catch the show (and get started sooner!) Will publish more trip dates very soon.
With a bunch of regulars aboard I had grand plans in mind this day.
Once evident the forecast was bound for the rubbish bin, oyyyyy.. A new plan had to be developed.
As Shelly, Bob and John sent today’s reef blocks over I was marking close to 30 feet of sea bass. Though we likely squished a few fish, Plan B looked like it had potential. A short test drift; we started fishing. Tried a bunch of reef today I’d built off the stern of my boat – some of it quite successfully.
Jigmaster Tom was first into double digits with good old “High Hook Shelly,” who was seen honing her skills on the anchor windlass today too, swiftly passing him by. In all fairness her ‘luck’ today likely sourced from Steve being an upstanding gentleman and keeping the shorts away from her hooks. Chivalry at sea personified!
Then, in an astonishing turn of events, our very own Portly Prince of Rotundity & Jocularity; that Perpetual Provider of Pastries in the body of Hurricane Murray his dern self, he landed the pool winner (that I was trying to line up with Sea Bass Bob!)
Who would have dreamed..
Time we got underway for home the wind had swung SSW and gotten fairly energetic – approaching downright nautical actually.
Sure beat being ashore though.
Been working on another attempt at bringing my sea bass recruitment failure thinking to light. Found an email from 2021 when we were (as predicted in 2015/16) catching the heck out of sea bass – even many summer limits. In Nov/Dec 21 I went sixteen straight trips with a boat limit. In that 2021 email I predicted we’d be having it a lot tougher in 2026.
And do.
I’m hoping regulators will ponder: “How does Monty accurately predict sea bass population swings so far into the future?”
It’s super simple. If they’ll disregard MRIP’s “Maryland Shore anglers caught 170,000 sea bass in Sept/Oct — or NY Private Boats landed far more sea bass in a few months than All Trawl/Trap & Party/Charter along the coast caught all year — if they’ll just use the VTR data all commercial and for hire skippers send in for every trip? Answers will jump to the fore.
And if they won’t?
My lifelong efforts at leaving a healthy fishery behind will appear to have failed.
Promise – with the correct management measures sea bass will be very good again in just three years – amazingly so in five.
It’s widely understood animal behavior (but never applied to fisheries management that I’m aware of) that’s forcing sea bass populations down from Cape Cod MA to Florida.
And it’s for this exact same reason that sea bass are beginning to flourish in the newly warming Gulf of Maine.
Instead of the feds shrugging their shoulders, “Oops, Sorry Congress, must be climate change” Sea Bass are 100% fixable!
Two sides of the same coin. Nature has a plan to populate new habitat swiftly – and to prevent overpopulations that might crash a region’s population.
Management figuring out that second part is key.
Also posted the OC Reef Foundation’s raffle yesterday to Facebook.
The more people who share it organically, the better it will do.
The fish we caught today were mostly on block drops published annually in the OCRF chart book – they were tiny reefs built off my transom for free. The annual Reef Raffle, Reef Feast & wonderful donations build the larger projects.
It works!
While one county in Florida spends almost 15 million to sink a giant scuba & fishing attraction, we’re having a raffle that we might continue to restore reef habitat lost 50 to 70 years ago.
Getting it done too!
Tix at ocreefs.org – Share those raffle posts. Will be many before grand prizes are drawn Valentine’s Day!
November Back Bay Flounder And A Couple of 500+ Pound Swordfish
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